The Rest Of The Rest

If you've been following the first round matchups in our all-time head-to-head playdowns,  you're no doubt wondering what happened in all the non-marquee games. You know, the games Kevin Harlan and Randy Cross call every week.

Wait no more. Here are the results, shorter and sweeter than Christina Aguilera on a stick.

Chicago Bears vs. Houston Texans: All the history in the world vs. no history. Mario Williams bites Sid Luckman on the ankle and Matt Schaub avoids death, but to no avail. Bears 47-6.

New Orleans Saints vs. Detroit Lions: Which is to say, the 2009-10 New Orleans Saints versus the Lions. The Lions lack a quarterback but don’t lack for anything else, especially in the secondary. Barry Sanders runs for 187 and the Lions triumph 31-10.

Cleveland Browns vs. Carolina Panthers: That would be the old Cleveland Browns, plus Joe Thomas. Cleveland piles up 354 yards rushing, and Cam Newton makes a cameo as the kicking-tee retriever. Browns 37-7.

New York Giants vs. Seattle Seahawks: Closer than you might think, since the Seahawks are pretty good everywhere. But real good beats pretty good 27-17.

Baltimore Ravens vs. Tennessee Titans: If the Ravens were allowed to be the Browns this would be a different story. As it is, Munchak and Matthews neutralize the Ravens' front seven, Earl Campbell rushes for two and Warren Moon throws for one, and the Ravens still don’t have an offense. Baltimore bows 24-10.

Jacksonville Jaguars vs. Pittsburgh Steelers: Fifty years of backstory a/k/a everything prior to Chuck Noll doesn’t help the Steelers much. But they don’t really need the help. Steelers 20-6.

Philadelphia Eagles vs. Indianapolis Colts: See above. Pete Pihos and Alex Wojciehowicz don’t add much to the bottom line. Peyton Manning throws for 346 in a 37-20 shootout.

Buffalo Bills vs. San Francisco 49ers: Too much San Fran offense makes up for a so-so defense. San Fran wins the Battle for O.J. 31-20.

New York Jets vs. Oakland Raiders: The Jets at their best have never been as good as a pretty good Raider team. Joe Namath throws four picks in a 28-3 Oakland win.

Cincinnati Bengals vs. Minnesota Vikings: Too much D, too much O, and zero Ochocinco. Minnesota 41-13.

Atlanta Falcons vs. Green Bay Packers: Reminiscent of their first matchups, when it was Nitschke, Davis & Co. versus Cannonball, the Hawk and the Wheel. Starr throws for two and Favre (in a mop-up role) throws for one, and the running game runs. Packers 38, Falcons 7.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. Dallas Cowboys: Tampa’s defense tries to make it close, but tires in the fourth. Aikman throws for one and Dorsett runs for two in a 27-13 ‘Boys win. Jerry Jones dances on the Texas Stadium star to celebrate.

You eagle-eyed readers no doubt detected a missing matchup. That game is just finishing up as we speak, and if we can ever get Kenny Albert to shut up we may have the results for you later this week. In the meantime, pray for laryngitis.

Greatness By Committee

There’s a book called The Pro Football Abstract that purports to do what The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract does – and not only does it purport, it pretty much moves well beyond the purporting stage to the purloining stage, right down to aping the breakout boxes.

It’s not a bad read, but the author’s biases show through like a panty line in the days before Underalls.

He boots Gino Marchetti down the stairs by saying that while Marchetti was the first modern defensive end, he was far from the best. There are a bushel-basket of barrier-breaking athletes you can knock from their perches if you take that approach. Don Hutson. Sammy Baugh. Bill George. Bob Cousy. Bobby Orr. Bruce Sutter. Babe Ruth. Joe DiMaggio was just Carl Crawford with slick hair, if you want to play that game.

John Sandusky, who was coaching the Colts’ defensive line at the time, didn’t coach Gino Marchetti any differently or scheme with him any differently than he did with Don Joyce or Jim Mutscheller or any of the others. But only Gino Marchetti became Gino Marchetti. Only Gino Marchetti became the first. Only Gino Marchetti leapfrogged O-linemen and scared the prunes out of Milt Plum. And if he was eating up Lou Groza and Forrest Gregg and the rest, as the testimony shows he was, then he must have been pretty special. More special than Bruce Smith? At least as special as Bruce Smith.

The author also uses this sort of logic in reverse and plays favorites. He ranks Gene Hickerson third all-time among guards on the premise that the Browns ran the ball well in part because Jim Brown was carrying it and in part because Hickerson was leading the way.

Well, Hickerson was the first southern guard to pull out in front of a HOF running back with a monosyllabic last name, but he was far from the best. (See?) And seriously, while the numbers do show that the Browns were a great running team, the numbers also show that the Browns were a great running team not only before Hickerson cracked the starting lineup but also after, when it was Doug Dieken, Pete Adams, Bob DeMarco, John Demarie, and Gerry Sullivan leading the way. In fact, once Forrest Gregg got his system in place in the mid-‘70s, they were actually a better running team than they had been in Hickerson’s last five years, when he was a Hall of Fame guard leading the way for HOF running back Leroy Kelly.

What was the difference? The Browns transitioned from a scheme where one back did almost all the running to one where carries were shared. From 1960 to 1980 the Browns averaged 2,000 yards rushing a season. However, those yards were divvied up far differently in the ‘70s than they were in the ‘60s.

Instead of Jim Brown getting 80 percent of the work Greg Pruitt, Bo Scott, Leroy Kelly, and Ken Brown all took a hack at it. And it really didn’t matter who blocked. The Browns got their yards anyway.

Gene Hickerson – and by association, Dick Schafrath – benefitted from being very good players in a scheme calculated to net 2,000 rushing yards every year. After Otto Graham retired, the Browns’ success hinged on the passing game. A good passing year for the Browns’ QBs meant a good year for the Browns. Those incremental passing yards made the difference. And there at last you can’t say Hickerson or Schafrath made a difference.

So Sad (To Watch Good Teams Go Bad)

Just so you know, I am the only writer in the world who would dare to explain Jerry Sherk and Walter Johnson by way of Gale Gillingham.

The HOF has been extremely reluctant to recognize players from teams that used to be great but were absolutely useless when these players played for them. Actually, “extremely reluctant” is not quite right. They haven’t done it, period.

Players who played their whole career for a bad team? That’s a different story. Larry Wilson, Roger Werhli, Dan Dierdorf, and Jackie Smith played for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1960-80, a team that went 136-134-12 with a near-HOF coach for half the time. The Cardinals couldn’t yank the flags off a second-grade Pop Warner halfback and ran the ball collectively as well as Sonny Jurgensen after a brewery tour, and they have four HOFers? It must have been everyone else’s fault. Larry Stallings’ fault. Johnny Roland’s fault. Jim Hart’s fault. Ernie McMillan’s fault. Okay, it was Sam Silas’ fault, but still. Good players on traditionally bad teams skate. Good players on recently bad teams suffer.

Leroy Kelly is not an example of this. The Leroy Kelly Browns were an extension of the latter-day Jim Brown Browns. And anyway, Kelly had Gene Hickerson blocking for him.

Neither is Claude Humphrey. Humphrey really was the diamond in the dungheap. There was nothing he could do to make the Atlanta Falcons anything more than unremittingly awful. And someday he’ll be in the Hall of Fame for it.

Compare their cases to that of Gale Gillingham. Gillingham didn’t get a shot with the Packers until most of the good players blew the Bay in the wake of Vince Lombardi’s departure, and while everyone and everything around him went instantly bad under Phil Bengston’s somnolent non-leadership Gillingham stayed good – great, almost. He was a five-time All-Something playing for an offense that did not exactly trot Taylor and Hornung out there, and yet there is no one touting Gale Gillingham for the HOF.

And honestly: Who is going to push enshrinement for a player whose plaque might read, “Was the anchor of a Packers’ line that went from legendary to lousy over his 11-year career”? Who among you is willing accept that Gale Gillingham played better in 1968, the year the Packers went 6-8, than the year before, when the Packers went 9-4-1? This stuff might get written about in the hopeful between-the-seasons stories, but it’s the first to escape from long-term memory when the past is re-evaluated and players are separated good from bad.

The same applies to Mike Curtis. Curtis won a Super Bowl, but the worse the Colts got the better Curtis played. He was the definitive middle linebacker of the post-definitive-middle-linebacker era, Joe Schmidt when everyone was focused on Bubba Smith. If anyone talks about Mike Curtis for the Hall of Fame they do it under their breath.

And Pete Retzlaff, whose star rose as the Eagles slowly sunk into the east, who supplied the best early definition of a pass-catching tight end and made Norm Snead look good. (Try that sometime.) And John Gordy, Alex Karras, and Roger Brown, O-line and D-line stars on a team whose offense was built out of melted-down Edsels. And Bruce Bosley, who got to block for Ken Willard instead of Joe Perry, Hugh McElhenny, and John Henry Johnson.

While it’s a fact that going down on the up escalator is not the way to get to Canton, this is not a way of making a compelling case for Walter Johnson and Jerry Sherk as Hall of Famers. Can't be done. Sherk, a Joe Klecko-type white tornado in the middle of the line, was a four-time All-Something and Johnson, a Humphrey-like pass rusher, was a three-timer, which makes them the equivalent of a Tom Keating or a Larry Hand. They’re good players, but there are better. Their teammate Jim Houston, for one.

So given that Sherk and Johnson were anchoring the D-line, Houston was linebacking, Doug Dieken was blocking his limbs down to the nubbins, and the Greg Phipps and the rest of the running-back-by-committee were cracking off 2,000 yards a season, who gets the blame for the Browns’ steady slide into mediocrity?

Forrest Gregg, just because he was rotten in Green Bay. The receiving corps, who had nothing going for them but cool names (Billy LeFear, Fair Hooker, Chip Glass, Jubilee Dunbar, Gloster Richardson). A nasty secondary beyond Clarence Scott. The rest of the linebackers and D-line. The fact that Mike Phipps had to learn on the job because Bill Nelsen couldn’t execute a five-step drop without rupturing his patellar tendon.

Guilt-by-association is easy when good teams go bad. Sherk and Johnson are undeserving of being lumped in with undeserving players. But other players deserve even better.

The Terrifically Transitional Ozzie Newsome

What do we want from our Hall of Fame tight ends? The answer has changed over time.

The tight end became an established position throughout the NFL in approximately 1960. Not surprisingly, the first incarnation of the HOF tight end was as a bruising blocker who could also catch passes.
Bobby Walston may have been the first-best, but there were others around about that time. Certainly there were large, physical pass receivers who were also good blockers playing end before 1960. Cf. Ron Kramer, just to name one.

That early definition of the position certainly has its adherents. HOF voters have repeatedly turned aside the best pass-catching tight ends of the '60s and '70s -- Pete Retzlaff and Jerry Smith -- in favor of the better blockers: Charlie Sanders, Mike Ditka, Jim Langer, John Mackey, and Jackie Smith.

However, starting in the '80s the top tight ends were the pass-catchers for whom blocking was as big of part of their game as holding on extra points: Kellen Winslow, Keith Jackson, and Newsome.

This is hardly a revelation. As the game moved towards a pass-first track meet, the idea of the tight end as an extra left tackle who can run the occasional slip route has grown as antequated as the cassette deck. The All-Pro tight ends of the last 30 years haven't been the Pete Metzelaars and Toolbox Wests of the tight-end world; they've been Antonio Gates and the Tony Gonzalez. In that context Newsome shapes up as a transitional guy.

Transitional for this too: He's one of the few old Browns to travel with the franchise and become a new Raven. The new Browns (as by association, the Ravens) are problematic, and not just because they have a front office whose combined skill is not proportional to its combined weight. Does the time line for the Browns run Cleveland to Baltimore or Cleveland to (pause) to Cleveland?

The NFL, ignoring the precedent of every other team (including the previous tenants of Charm City) has deigned that in the case of the Browns, the line runs from Brown's Browns to Kosar's Browns to the Browns of Montario Hardesty.

Wow. Good morning, Baltimore, indeed. Newsome has made it work, but no one else could -- not Art Modell, certainly -- but only because Newsome had experience in the position.

The Numbers Are A Beast

I know I promised I wouldn't drag numbers into this, but I just couldn't help myself.

Just assuming for a second that all numbers are not whacked when it comes to evaluating the relative merits of O-linemen, let’s let the actuaries and allied number-crunchers make their case.

It just so happens I have actuaries who are my friends. It happens when you work in insurance. It especially happens when you work in insurance and marry an actuary.

Anyway, one of the endearing things about actuaries is that they’re so amazed to find someone talking to them that they will do practically anything you ask them to, as long as it involves numbers and not talking to members of the opposite sex.

(I make an exception to this in the case of my wife, who will most emphatically not do anything I ask her to. In her case, matrimony overrules actuarialism.)

So I was thinking about offensive linemen in the Hall of Fame, and wondering why Gene Hickerson was in and others were out. It’s not that I have anything against Gene Hickerson; not at all. He was one of my heroes growing up. Basically any football player who struck the elbows-out O-lineman pose was my hero, and looking back I have no bloody idea why.

Anyway, the Hickerson thought led me to wonder why Frank Gatski was in when others were out, which led me to wonder why Mike McCormack was in when others were out. The common denominator was that they were Cleveland Browns linemen, and lo and behold, the Football HOF is just down the road a piece from Cleveland. Could there be a geographic bias in the selection of linemen for the Hall of Fame?

At this point I called up my actuary buddy and asked him to take a swag at the question. He boogied over to pro-football-reference.com and grabbed the average career value of HOF linemen and ranked the linemen on that basis.

What he got was this:

Anthony Munoz 137
Bruce Matthews 121
Ron Yary 119
Jim Ringo 113
Gene Upshaw 111
John Hannah 106
Forrest Gregg 104
Rosey Brown 103
Randall McDaniel 103
Art Shell 103
Mike Webster 103
Jim Parker 102
Gary Zimmerman 102
Jim Otto 100
Lou Groza 100
Larry Little 99
Jackie Slater 93
Gene Hickerson 92
Bob Brown 91
Tom Mack 91
Lou Creekmur 90
Stan Jones 88
Joe DeLamielleure 86
Rayfield Wright 86
Dan Dierdorf 86
Mike Munchak 84
Jim Langer 82
Bob St. Clair 80
Mike McCormack 80
Ron Mix 77
George Connor 73
Frank Gatski 72
Dwight Stephenson 71
Russ Grimm 63
Billy Shaw 50


Okay, so Hickerson ranked higher than I thought, but otherwise I could justify pretty much everything I saw.

Then I realized that average value isn’t an average at all. It weights its numbers based on longevity, and longevity along does not get you into the HOF.

So when you factor for longevity the rankings go like this:

Anthony Munoz 11.42
George Connor 10.43
Jim Parker 10.20
Dwight Stephenson 10.14
Bob Brown 10.11
Lou Creekmur 10.00
Gary Zimmerman 9.27
John Hannah 8.83
Rosey Brown 8.58
Ron Yary 8.50
Jim Ringo 8.07
Bob St. Clair 8.00
Gene Upshaw 7.93
Randall McDaniel 7.92
Mike Munchak 7.64
Larry Little 7.62
Tom Mack 7.58
Jim Langer 7.45
Art Shell 7.36
Stan Jones 7.33
Mike McCormack 7.27
Joe DeLamielleure 7.17
Rayfield Wright 7.17
Dan Dierdorf 7.17
Jim Otto 7.14
Ron Mix 7.00
Forrest Gregg 6.93
Bruce Matthews 6.72
Frank Gatski 6.55
Mike Webster 6.44
Russ Grimm 6.30
Billy Shaw 6.25
Gene Hickerson 6.13
Jackie Slater 4.89
Lou Groza 4.76

Better. Hickerson drops but Stephenson rises, which is okay, seeing as he was the Practically Perfect Center for most of his career. Gregg and Matthews might be low, or their reputations may be so strong that they overshadow their real accomplishments.

Okay, now I did the same for a lot of HOF suspects. Just looking at their career AVs gives you this:

Mick Tinglehoff 102
Mike Kenn 100
Russ Washington 99
Dick Schafrath 98
Lomas Brown 96
Jim Tyrer 96
Larry Allen 91
Chris Hinton 83
Jerry Kramer 83
Ken Gray 82
Leon Gray 81
Marvin Powell 80
Bob DeMarco 78
Duane Putnam 78
John Niland 78
Ed Budde 77
Ruben Brown 71
Ernie McMillan 70
Dennis Harrah 66
Dick Stanfel 65
Rich Saul 56

Mick Tinglehoff as an HOFer? It’s a satisfying thought. It feels right. On the other hand, look who else is up there: a bunch of offensive-line lifers and Dick Schafrath (whose raw score is way better than Gene Hickerson’s).

Ah, but these numbers overvalue longevity. Correcting for that brings this:

Dick Stanfel 9.285714
John Niland 7.8
Jerry Kramer 7.545455
Dick Schafrath 7.538462
Leon Gray 7.363636
Marvin Powell 7.272727
Duane Putnam 7.090909
Jim Tyrer 6.857143
Russ Washington 6.6
Larry Allen 6.5
Chris Hinton 6.384615
Ken Gray 6.307692
Mick Tinglehoff 6
Bob DeMarco 6
Mike Kenn 5.882353
Ed Budde 5.5
Ruben Brown 5.461538
Lomas Brown 5.333333
Dennis Harrah 5.076923
Ernie McMillan 4.666667
Rich Saul 4.666667

This may be going too far in the other direction, but it makes more sense. Stanfel was a heck of a lineman for bad teams, and Schafrath was great no matter how you slice it. And it throws the long-lived slugs to the bottom, which is where they belong in this exercise.

So what I wound up finding was not necessarily that there’s regional bias in the selection of HOF OLs (though three of the bottom seven linemen are Browns, and then there’s Leroy Kelly over in the RBs) but that longevity is overvalued. Playing 16 pretty good years is more valuable than playing 10 great ones. And that’s just not the way it is.